An Introduction to the Trinity by Declan Marmion, Rik Van Nieuwenhove (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 477 An Introduction to the Trinity. By DECLAN MARMION and Rik Van NIEUWENHOVE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. 251. $85.00 (cloth), $27.99 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-521-87952-1 (cloth), 978-0521 -70522-6 (paper). This introduction to the Trinity has both historical and constructive concerns. The historical predominates in chapters 2 through 5. Chapter 2 reviews the scriptural roots of the eventual doctrine of the Trinity, while chapter 3 examines the emergence of the doctrine in early Christianity, followed by chapters on Trinitarian theology from the medieval period through the Reformation (chap. 4), and from Schleiermacher to the end of the twentieth century (chap. 5). There is a textual focus in each of these chapters, and what significant theologians have taught about the Trinity is conveyed through the examination of pertinent primary texts. Included among the theologians thus presented are the Cappadocians and Augustine; Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Jan van Ruusbroec, Martin Luther, and John Calvin; and, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, Balthasar, and Zizioulas. The reports are balanced and accurate, and distinctive voices come through. There is considerable credence to the authors’ claim that in this book the diversity and richness of Trinitarian theologies throughout the centuries are displayed (246). The authors’ constructive/systematic interests stand to the fore in the first chapter (which also serves as an overture to the entire book); the final pages of chapter 5 (193-99); the Epilogue; and throughout the final chapter (chap. 6). As in the earlier chapters, in chapter 6 the authors turn to particular theologians, as they consider the tasks, challenges, and opportunities of Trinitarian theology in a postmodern and pluralistic religious setting. Among the theologians treated in this final chapter are Moltmann (again), Hart, Milbank, Dupuis, and D’Costa. The historical and constructive, however, go closely together; and what the authors advocate in the final chapter is well prepared for by what goes before. Systematic issues inform their rendering of the diverse Trinitarian theologies in the earlier chapters. And the characteristics which the authors think should define a “future theology of Trinity” (197) emerge from the patristic and medieval theologies of Trinity discussed in the earlier chapters. In recent writings about the Trinity there has been plenty of talk about “renewal” or “revival;” these authors specify that fruitful renewal in Trinitarian theology will come through closer engagement with the early and medieval tradition (27). In sketching a viable Trinitarian theology, the authors attend to what is proclaimed and to the way in which the mystery of Trinity is to be approached and investigated. As they note, Christians agree in proclaiming their God as one and three (18). The days of open subordinationism, which aimed to maintain distinction among divine persons at the expense of divine unity and full equality of persons, or of overt modalism, conversely committed to the oneness of God, are long past. So too Christians are alert, in principle, to the dangers of tritheism, where divine unity among the three divine persons is viewed as a kind of collective, that is, in the way many persons are said to be one people (16-18). In BOOK REVIEWS 478 any discussion of the Trinity, both sides of the mystery—the unity and the threeness of the one God—must be upheld and receive like attention, and neither reality is to be privileged over the other. Throughout the book, the authors indeed insist on the fact that the Trinity is a mystery. God in his richness and abundance transcends our ability to know. What we can (and must) say is dependent on what God reveals of himself through his activities in the world, as recounted in Scripture. The triune God creates, governs, and saves. The triune God, who is source and end, is transcendent source and end, not to be reduced to a “thing of this world,” although he is surely active in the world that is his; and so statements about this God will be made with the awareness of how far short our naming falls. The cataphatic is accompanied by the apophatic, in acknowledgment of the divine transcendence (12-14). The authors are much concerned with the...